Frosty The Snow Flick: Thinking of Some Cold Weather Films

A couple of days ago, we got hit with close to a foot of snow. While I've survived many a cold, snowy winter, it is not my favorite climate. If I get too cold, I cease to function. I've been this way for a while; as soon as I start to feel a chill I start to shut down. The worst episode was when I was a teenager. It was February with snow on the ground and my dad and I were driving back down the I-95 to the Bronx from Boston, where I'd visited some college campuses. The station wagon malfunctioned somehow, and in the days before cellphones, my dad left me in the vehicle on the side of the road while he went for help. Waiting for his return, I developed my first case of frostbite. Seeing my fingers turn from white to purple to black, then feeling the burning, searing pain when the blood finally returned to my extremities is something I have never forgotten.

So when I see films where extreme cold and snow are a factor, I physically recoil. No matter how great the storyline, no matter how temperate my surroundings while watching, I often find myself growing uncomfortable, viewing with my shoulders raised to my ears, arms crossed, hands tucked under, teeth gritted.

Here are three of the frostiest films that I can think of off the top of my head:

The Revenant (2015)
This is an Oscar-winning tale of adventure and revenge in a bitter cold West of 1823, directed by Alejandro G. Iñáritu. Leonardo diCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, a reluctant guide for a ragtag fur-trapping party, whose half Pawnee teen son comes along. The group is attacked by another tribe, and to avoid being ambushed by more natives along their journey, Glass leads them overland to Fort Kiowa. Except on the way he is horribly mauled by a bear. The group's now self-appointed leader, John Reynolds (a weaselly Tom Hardy), attempts to smother him but is caught in the act by Glass' son. Hardy stabs the son to death before Glass' helpless eyes, convinces the rest of the party that Glass is dead, and abandons him to the elements, intent on cashing in the pelts for himself. The film now becomes a grueling survival story, as Glass must endure bitter cold, dense snowfall, bone-chilling rains, ice-laden rivers, further Indian attacks, and hunger, not to mention being debilitated by his wounds, as he attempts to get to Fort Kiowa, then revenge himself on Reynolds. Their final showdown takes place in a vast snowy landscape by a frozen creek. Photographed in grim grays and dim blues, the film' cinematography is awe-inspiring as it depicts the vast and lonely vistas of snow-covered mountains, frosty meadows, and ice-covered waterways. But the film literally left me cold. While DiCaprio's endurance in portraying this long-suffering character is notable, I couldn't wait for The Revenant to be over.

Dr. Zhivago (1965)
This David Lean-directed classic tells the story of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of an idealistic, aristocratic poet and doctor, and the troubled seamstress' daughter turned nurse with whom he has an affair. It's a long, melodramatic film on a scale as vast as Russia itself, with numerous twists and turns, a score of dynamic characters, incredible setpieces, and a soaring musical score. If you pay attention it offers new and interesting details with every successive viewing. What I most remember is Zhivago fleeing Moscow to a country estate with his wife, son, and in-laws, traveling by train through a barren landscape of endless sacked villages covered in snow, then arriving at the manse in the dead of winter by horse-drawn sleigh. Later in the film, he will take refuge here again with his lover, Lara, after the estate's lower floors have become an ice palace due to destruction by rebel forces and the elements. The cinematography and set designs are amazing and who can forget the Russian style sable and fox furs donned by the romantic pair as they survey the scene? The two almost make the snow seem cozy.

Fargo (1996)
Named for the North Dakota city where some of the film's "malfeasance" takes place, Fargo is the Coen Brothers' tragicomic story about a hapless car salesman so desperate to make a name for himself as the sole owner of a parking lot that he sells his soul -- and that of his unsuspecting wife, the daughter of a rich and controlling local tycoon -- to a pair of violent, ignorant louts. Nothing good can come from a scheme in which Jerry Lundegaard (the incredible William H. Macy) pays to have his own wife kidnaped so he can pocket the ransom and launch his business; everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and hot on his trail is a good-natured, persistent, and very pregnant police officer Marge Gunderson (a crack turn by Frances McDormand) from Minnesota's Twin Cities. Snow and cold figure prominently in the film, as characters must suit up to head out into the elements in snowboots and hats, the long featureless highway between towns is a bleak frozen tundra, a police informant so bundled up as he leans on a snow shovel that he can barely be seen, Steve Buscemi's bad guy packs snow onto his bloody jaw after being shot, then later cluelessly buries an attache case full of cash at an indistinguishable fence post among many along the snow-swept road. At the conclusion Marge chases down acerbic bad guy Peter Stormare across a frozen lake. Cold and snow are an unremarkable part of life in this part of the country. Marge lectures her quarry as she takes him to jail in a squad car traversing the snowdrifts: "There's more to life than a little money, ya know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are. And it's a beautiful day." (Emphasis mine.)

What are your standout snowy flicks? Feel free to follow this blog and post your comments below.
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P.T. & The Flash: "The Greatest Showman"

The Greatest Showman
directed by Michael Gracey
starring Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya

I'll say it again: I love musicals. I like watching talented people cobble together a full performance of story, song, and dance, using all of their narrative, vocal, and physical skills. I love being transported into a fully fleshed-out fantasy world. I want to be able to examine the performance, watch it from all angles, get an immersive experience.

Unfortunately many of today's musicals are so determined to break away from the older, classic Hollywood movie musicals and serve an apparently attention-deficit-disordered audience that they now offer style over substance, speed over accuracy, flash over form. I feel cheated out of a full experience by a number of now-common devices: slap dash, amateurish, or rushed storytelling; lightning-fast editing and multiple cross cuts that don't allow me to savor the fine points of choreography or even the actors' faces; simple songs voiced by unremarkable singers with insistent, multi-voiced choruses not sung with artistic intent but flung through the speakers like so many handfuls of pop-music confetti. Maybe this is because today's movie musicals seem to be targeted primarily at 14-year-old girls with the attention spans of butterfly moths and artistic discernment honed by years of playing videogames, watching animated cartoons, and wearing sequinned princess costumes.

Even the choreography now is moving away from the rigors and finesse of trailblazers like Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, and Hermes Pan to a style that's a cross between high school cheerleading, square-dance hootenannies, and the most elementary B-boying. You should know that there is quite a bit of stomping and pointing in this film. So much stomping, in fact, that I came to see it as the characters' insistence that they have a right to exist, a right to pursue whatever goals they set for themselves, and a right to present this modest entertainment as the height of artistic excellence.

This is a major reason why The Greatest Showman was such a disappointment. There is a whole lot of style over substance in this film, perhaps the fault of first-time director Gracey, who comes to the project after directing commercials in Australia. The sets and the costumes, the makeup and the visual effects are absolutely stunning. But like a newborn who fails to adapt to breastfeeding, I never properly latched on to this glittering tale of the rags to riches story of Phineas T. Barnum. Viewers are rushed and bullied into accepting its parameters and premise with little time to orient themselves within the story.

What's more, while I find Hugh Jackman an attractive and able performer, in all honesty, his voice is not that special. It's not transporting, sonorous, inspiring, or even imbued with personality. His singing voice is simply serviceable. Perhaps this is a function of the songs, which are robust and cleverly composed and produced to the outer limits of modern studio technocraft, but, being entirely contemporary and anachronistic to the time period in which the story takes place, are bombastic and forgettable. The most unique and interesting voice in the entire film belongs to a woman with a full beard and mustache (Keala Settle in full makeup), but her quivering earnestness and bouncing bosoms almost turn her into a cartoon laughing stock (indeed, it's hard not to think that she is mere seconds from an explosive costume malfunction during her energetic dance routines).

So let's talk about the cast of characters. PT Barnum's wife (Michelle Williams with her usual Mona Lisa smile) and daughters are as cute as cute can be. We get to see them, get to know them as adorable, unendingly supportive, and humanizing elements for the character of Barnum himself, whose motivations (get even with his rich father in law, exploit the downtrodden both inside and outside his tent) are entirely suspect. The cast of misfits, oddities, and physically challenged performers Barnum drafts into his service get embarrassingly short shrift. For most, other than Tom Thumb, we barely even learn their names, histories or the true nature of their gifts or get to enjoy their acts. Former Disney star Zendaya is cast as a beautiful young aerialist, and she gets to emote and sing, but her character is only barely sketched out. In her star-crossed romance with Barnum partner Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron), I wasn't sure if the impediment to their happy future was her perceived undesirable status as a circus freak or a person of color or both. And the whole Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) storyline, though historically apt, failed in one respect: Lind was the Swedish Nightingale of that era, but the songs she was given to sing in the movie did little -- in my estimation -- to earn her that title. Further, for a film mostly set in New York City -- Barnum's American Museum was located in the Wall Street area -- the exterior sets seem to resemble some fantasy metropolis in a foreign land.

I'm not even going to get into the discussion of the real P.T. Barnum's exploitation and abuse of people of color, the physically and mentally challenged, and even the wildlife he retained in his museum and live shows. You can read about that here. Only rarely do film entertainments, least of all musicals, adhere to the facts of their subjects.

This is one of the very few instances in a film where I feel that a character needed to be designated as a narrator -- and I'm not really a big fan of narrators. Think of The Age of Innocence, how the unseen narrator was able to put a lot of the story, and the feelings of the characters, into context. Granted, the narration was adapted straight from Edith Wharton's novel. But if Tom Thumb, or even Zendaya's aerialist partner, had told the story of Barnum through their eyes, explaining his rise and fall and why the performers came to feel like family (at least in this telling), it would have enhanced the story significantly, as would a static camera during the large production numbers.

I actually enjoyed the music of The Greatest Showman, and I appreciate the effort and talent it took to produce this film. But as a whole, it left me unmoved. And that's OK. It seems entirely fitting that a big screen musical about a razzle-dazzle showman who said "There's a sucker born every minute" should be at the center of this piece of cotton candy fluff.

Femme Fatales, Dizzy Dames & the Sad '70s Saps Who Rescue Them: "The Nice Guys" & "Inherent Vice"

The Nice Guys (2016)
Inherent Vice (2014)

The Nice Guys came on cable again recently. It reminded me anew of how the time-worn themes of the femme fatale and the damsel in distress are played out, again and again, even in contemporary cinema.

Mysterious, unknowable, sexually enticing, and often speaking in riddles, the femme fatale traditionally uses her allure -- knowingly or unknowingly -- to draw the male lead into a mystery, trap, or caper of some kind. As moviemaking has evolved with the culture over the decades, a twist on the femme fatale trope has emerged: That of the ditzy female, usually blonde, whose blithe ignorance gets her into hot water that she must be rescued from, usually by a man who appoints himself her savior. For both the Dizzy Dames and the Femme Fatales, the man endures all manner of humiliation, deprivation, danger and bodily harm to safeguard the clueless woman. The dizzy dame plot and its variations have most often fueled any number of screen comedies (Who’s That Girl, Desperately Seeking Susan, Butterflies Are Free, Something Wild, The Seven-Year Itch, Splash, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Born Yesterday, etc.), but they can be the centerpiece of dramas as well.

Set in 1977 Los Angeles, with all the attendant bellbottoms and disco beats, the story of Nice Guys follows the entangled paths of Jackson Healy, an enforcer for hire played by Russell Crowe, and failing private investigator Holland March, played by Ryan Gosling, who’s got a mortgage and a wanna-be-grown pre-teen daughter. The two men cross paths “cute” – Healy is hired to bang up March at his L.A. hilltop bungalow to warn him off a case – and they reluctantly join forces to locate a porn star who may or may not have died in a car crash, which leads them to the trail of the missing daughter of a local Justice Department official. In the process, the two heroes squabble like Felix and Oscar, ride around a sun-drenched Hollywood in a convertible Cadillac (I would swear that Gosling drives the same Caddy in La La Land), trade blows with bad guys, and stumble through a decadent Hollywood Hills party in search of film footage with the potential to bring down a struggling automaker.

The film, directed by Shane Black, is supposed to be a neo-noir thriller, but its overarching sunniness and toothless sense of danger play more like an original ‘70s episode of Starsky & Hutch than anything approaching Chinatown.

Gosling’s shambling loser character, Holland March, gets a veneer of sympathy for the “cute” relationship he has with his daughter, whom he’s raising alone. But with the two heroes already chest deep in doo-doo chasing after a nudie star and a hippy activist, he loses points in my eyes for cluing in his precocious 13-year-old daughter to all the details of the case as though she’s an adult, leading her to take an active role in their investigation with dire – and comic -- consequences. This is a movie that thinks everything little (white) girls do – no matter how clueless, ill-timed, illogical, or useless, whether they’re 12 or 22 – is somehow just adorable, even as it puts them and everyone around them in peril and requires incredible feats of human endurance to rescue them from.

The plot is overly complicated and somewhat silly, and somehow we the audience are supposed to take a liking to these two endearing, bumbling mercenaries—Nice Guys!-- who just want to do the right thing – for the right price. It’s a pleasant enough romp with some great nostalgic 70s music (the soundtrack boasts Kool & the Gang, EWF, the Bee Gees, America, Kiss, Al Green and more). But it’s hard to drum up enough sympathy for the two leading men or the fallen angels they’re trying to find. While Crowe and Gosling – who reportedly took the roles so that they could work together – seem to be having a rip-roaring good time, It’s no mystery why Nice Guys flopped at the box office.

Nice Guys reminded me of a movie I’d gone to the theater to see a couple of years ago, 2014’s Inherent Vice, adapted from a novel by Thomas Pynchon – an author whose work has previously been dubbed unfilmable. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for difficult, somewhat obtuse material such as There Will Be Blood and The Master, takes a stab at it.

Also set in the Southern California of the early ‘70s, and also about an addled private eye trying to track down a missing person, the flick stars Joaquin Phoenix as Doc, who spends most of his time getting stoned in the beachfront Malibu home he’s barely holding on to. When his beautifully mysterious hippy ex-girlfriend shows up asking for help locating her boyfriend, a wealthy married real estate developer, Doc decides to take the case out of nostalgia for their lost relationship. The result is a labyrinthine and damn near incomprehensible journey throughout the length and breadth of Los Angeles County, as Doc agrees to take on two more equally perplexing missing person cases that confuse and confound him – not to mention the viewing audience.

Along the way Doc encounters a brutal police captain (Josh Brolin), an eccentric attorney (Benicio del Toro), Chinese massage parlor hookers, a bizarre sanitarium, the misuse of laughing gas, fatal speedballs, an Asian ghost ship, and enough weed smoke for three Cheech & Chong movies. The plot is almost too internecine to be followed and begs multiple viewings. Indeed, the title should be "Incoherent Vice." Also billed as a neo-noir dramedy, Inherent Vice combines some kooky characters with a wacked-out atmosphere and a loose-limbed sense of the absurd.

Still, it’s kind of fun to see Joaquin Phoenix disappear completely into yet another oddball character in his filmography (as he did with Paul Anderson’s The Master), and the unique narrative is helped along by the brilliantly zany Josh Brolin and the ever-quirky Benicio del Toro, along with appearances by Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, Eric Roberts, Owen Wilson, and others.

His Doc is a Dude without much philosophy of his own and way more of a marijuana haze than a series of White Russians can impart. As a result, Inherent Vice can be viewed as a study in murky moods and how actors embody challenging roles. It’s the sort of film that will give you a hangover.

Lost In The Sauce: "Roman J. Israel, Esq."

Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Directed by Dan Gilroy
Starring Denzel Washington

Our fast-paced technological culture speeds along with new information, innovations, and tech-enabled practices at a rate that some of us can scarcely wrap our minds around. Further, this culture shames, ridicules, and writes off anyone who can't keep up. Those people are a. Lazy, b. stupid, c. useless, and d. stuck in the past. So say the culture gurus, the tech entrepreneurs, and the millennial wiz kids. Get with the program or get left behind. Except some of us spent a lot of time and energy getting good--indeed, expert-- at things that may now be considered obsolete. Faced with radical change, some of us have trouble adapting. Some may be forced to start over and may not adapt at all. Some adapt, always running a step behind. And some, faced with the eradication of a world they once knew well and forced to navigate a landscape where they feel lost and uncomfortable, grow bitter and disillusioned. Not everyone is cut out to be cutting edge.

These are some of the thoughts I had watching Roman J. Israel, Esq., the new film starring Oscar winner Denzel Washington.

Roman is a socially maladjusted, stuck-in-the-1970s legal wizard who is relegated to the back room of a Los Angeles law practice to do extensive research and legal strategy, while his universally admired law partner pleads the cases in public. Deeply committed to justice, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law and a dogged sense of persistence, Roman seems to have made his peace with his role as the power behind the throne. Subsisting on peanut butter, engulfed in the sounds of classic soul and jazz recordings, and reliving his own halcyon days as a committed advocate of grassroots organizing for political change at a time when the Black Panthers were news, Roman has turned his tumbledown Koreatown apartment and his cluttered downtown office into a well-fortified, protective bubble against modern times. Until the day the bubble bursts, and Roman discovers that the throne was really just a rickety chair.

Change arrives in the form of a slick-suited corporate attorney named George Pierce (Colin Farrell), named by Roman's law partner and his family to liquidate the company now that the partner has had a heart attack. George quickly shatters Roman's illusions. The firm was in debt. The crusading law partner he so admired was engaged in kickbacks. And the partner's largesse, keeping Roman on the payroll but out of sight for years, has made him not just unfit to run the firm on his own, but damn near unemployable anywhere else. Despite Roman's efforts to get hired on elsewhere, he is forced to take the pity position George holds out to him at his fancy schmancy, high-cost, high-rise law firm where Roman's musty wide-lapel suits, puffed out fro, and no-filter pronouncements just don't fit in.

Roman's attempts to get with the program and prove that he can lawyer with the best of them lead him to make a major gaffe on a murder case that could attract a malpractice suit to his new firm. He presents his pet project, a long-labored-over bill to reduce plea bargaining and excessive sentencing, to George and is rejected. Then his attempt to give a presentation to a group of young, potential activists breaks down over gender politics. He's discomfited by the interest and admiration of Maya, a non-profit organizer he's met during his job search. Tired of being wrong, even as he tries to do what's right, and tired of being last while others seem to go first, Roman makes an illegal grab for a gold ring so that he can get a taste of the high life. Even as he regrets the move and attempts to right it, he is doomed by his decision.

Denzel does his usual bang-up job giving us a convincing portrait of a character we don't see every day. But while autism is hinted at, we never find out exactly what Roman has been diagnosed with or its specific effect on his life, other than spouting unedited phrases like "enemas of sunshine" (which I'm going to adopt in place of "bullshit", lol) and eating Jif every night. His law partner, painted as an eminent civil rights hero, is never shown on screen. And in scenes where he consults with the suspects in a grocery store killing, Roman doesn't have any problems communicating. While his character is being pressured on all sides, the choice that he makes to trade privileged information for reward money seems to come out of nowhere. Elsewhere in the film, Farrell's George Pierce can't decide if he is a cold-hearted corporate villain or a touchy-feely mentor. And Carmen Ejogo tries to give the character of Maya a committed center, but her attraction to Roman seems unrealistic as well.

It's far from a perfect film. But I think it's worth seeing. It made me think about how our culture leaves little room for people with differences, and how the desperation of being caught up in changing circumstances can tempt us, under pressure, to move the needle on our own moral compasses. Hold tight to your convictions, people. We're moving faster than ever, but don't lose your grip on your soul.

5 Tips to Watch a Movie Like A Pro!

I was coming out of the theater after watching Denzel Washington and Viola Davis give bravura performances in Washington’s screen adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences. A person walking ahead of me said to his companion, “God, that was awful.” The companion agreed: “Worst Denzel movie ever.”

I was stunned. What film were they watching? Further, what film had they been expecting that they judged this so harshly? Yes, the subject matter was occasionally grim. Denzel’s character was not a classic hero. However, a film’s subject can be troubling, sad, thought-provoking, and harsh and be an excellent film with powerful acting and incredible insight in dealing with its themes.

It occurred to me once again that most people go to the movies to be entertained on a level that only speaks to their own life experience. Blockbusters and horror movies do well because they offer thrills that people don’t often get in real life; quieter films that focus on character and dialogue require more work from the audience and often struggle to make back their investments.

Rarely do most people view a film from a larger perspective, which considers all the arts and crafts of filmmaking. But once you open your eyes to other aspects of the film beyond the story and the cast, or how you personally relate to them, you can evaluate what you’re watching and appreciate it on a whole new level. You won’t just like or dislike a flick, you’ll understand what the creative team actually did to make you like or dislike the film – like standing behind the curtain with the Great And Powerful Oz understanding what levers and buttons were pushed while the film was made to produce the overall project. Once you get a glimpse at that, it’s hard to watch a movie any other way.

Here are five underrated tips for watching a movie:

1. Know your film genres.
There’s westerns, psychological thrillers, romantic comedies, crime dramas, satires, war films, adventures, historical dramas, period dramas, science fiction, and coming-of-age films, to name just a few. These longstanding genres have defined conventions, a standard map for how the story proceeds. Romances usually follow the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl formula, embellished with complications. Adventures usually involve a hero’s journey, a race against time and opposing forces to achieve a goal. Westerns usually have a lone character arriving in a frontier town of the past and must fight against a personal or societal wrong. Whatever the genre, the main character must undergo some kind of change by the end: they finally go home/leave, they win/lose the fight, they fall in/out of love, they alter their beliefs/lifestyle/income/moral standards.
Today, most films combine or twist the genres to create something new. How well a film fulfills, expands, or breaks with the expected tropes of its particular genre-defying audience expectations -- is another measure of its success. One example is “Get Out,” which adds a layer of racial prejudice and paranoia along with an African American hero to create a contemporary and shocking story. Some stories add irony whereby, despite all that has happened, a character does not change by the end of the film though everyone around him/her does. Ask yourself what genre does the film you’re watching fit into? How does it compare with other films in the genre?

2. Understand the difference between casting and acting.
For many audiences, acting caliber is tough to gauge. Often, characters in a film are cast with certain stars because they add built-in characteristics and appeal. We like Denzel because he looks like us or like someone we know; he’s usually badass and smooth; and while he’s a great actor, he rarely plays a character that isn’t basically … him, or who we perceive him to be. With Denzel in a role, the audience has a certain expectation that is different than what Leonardo di Caprio or Johnny Depp would bring. But actors are still not their characters. Just ask John Boyega, who played Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and recently caught flak from Star Wars fans for engaging in a little sexually suggestive West Indian “wining” at a British Carnival celebration, something they feel Finn shouldn’t do. The skill of acting is in embodying another character in such a way that we experience them as real.
When watching, ask yourself: At any moment in the film, did I forget I was watching [fill in name of actor]? How did they use their speech, facial expressions, physicality to create this character? Was I emotionally impacted by their character’s dilemma, or was I just watching events unfold?

3. Look at everything presented on the screen.
Because film is a visual medium, it uses coded images and visual cues to communicate information not spoken by the characters. From the first scenes establishing time and place, we’re going to get a lot of this non-dialogue info. In many major studio productions, color and lighting are strong indicators of relationships, moods, even foreshadowing of events. Heroes still tend to wear white or light colors, and villains still wear black or dark colors. Watch the shade of a character’s clothing change or remain static as they grapple with events: the darker their clothing, the darker their intentions, and the lighter their clothing, the more we see them as sincere or heroic. Loud colors or prints reflect a loud or scattered personality, Like-minded characters tend to wear like colors; for instance, in a romance, the closer the two leads come to becoming lovers, the more the colors of their outfits begin to coordinate. A female character who is seeking to cause trouble or set a sexual trap will wear or carry something red. Further, a character whose face appears in partial shadow (as with the stripes from venetian blinds) is likely in deep trouble or is even doomed. Many directors like to use themes or recurring images to evoke responses in the audience; for instance, in Beyond The Lights, most of pop star Noni’s stage costumes featured chains and straps, which communicated that she was basically a captive of her lifestyle. Cats are used to indicate stealth or mystery, birds to represent freedom, etc.; a shot framing the character as small in a huge landscape indicates the scale of forces arrayed against him/her or their sense of singularity or loneliness. Not all films use these tropes, but they have been in use since Hollywood began so it’s useful to look for them.

4. Listen harder to the dialogue as well as the non-dialogue.
I took acting classes for a while in LA, not to be an actor but to improve the dialogue in my writing. I learned that dialogue works best when it exists on two levels: What the character is actually saying, and what they really mean. A character can respond “Fine” to the question “how are you?” a dozen different ways, and it becomes a lot more interesting if “Fine” really means “Stop asking me, I’ll be all right,” or “I hate you but I’m trying to be civil,” or “I’m crumbling but I must appear strong,” or “I just had the most sexually stimulating night of my life but that’s not your business.” Double entendre, irony, and lies reveal who the character really is. What the character chooses not to say, fails to say, or is struggling to say is just as important as the words that do come out of their mouths.

5. Listen harder to the music.
I spend two decades writing about popular music, so how music is used in film is important to me. I’m a fan of the well-considered multi-tune soundtrack, where films use previously recorded popular music to underscore the mood or setting in a film. This works because the audience is usually already familiar with these type of tracks and the impact of that music is immediate. Most often the music supervisor and director will choose songs specifically because the lyrics perfectly communicate the feelings of the character or sum up the action. The best use of this technique that I’ve seen recently is Baby Driver; the character of Baby doesn’t speak much but his iTunes playlist communicates not only his thoughts and feelings, but the tracks dictate how he physically moves through the world. The music of O Brother Where Art Thou perfectly creates the time and place, the South in the 1930s, with new recordings of classic bluegrass, blues, and roots gospel; the tune “Man of Constant Sorrow” is an equivalent musical narrative of the lead character’s Ulysses-like quest. Straight Outta Compton didn’t just use the music of N.W.A. in telling their story, it also used hit songs from the era to establish the time and place. Film scoring is just as important, though less appreciated by the public at large. A composed score also sets time, place, and most importantly the mood of a film. Often, the score creates musical motifs or themes for each character, and can ramp up tension and excitement. Notice how music enhances the overall project.

Other points of film analysis include the cinematography, costuming, set design, location, the structure of the script, the production values, and most importantly, what is the film’s overall message or argument — but that’s for more advanced viewing. The five points above are simple ways to begin actively watching a movie that can add to your overall viewing pleasure and give you more of a critic’s eye view.

So grab your popcorn and your Junior Mints and enjoy!

'Taxi Driver' Revisited: Racism, Revenge, and the 'Working Class Hero'

Taxi Driver
directed by Martin Scorsese
starring Robert DeNiro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Albert Brooks

Since The Deuce was getting ready to premiere on HBO, about the triple X theaters and prostitution in dirty, old '70s New York, I took another gander at Taxi Driver. I remember seeing it in the theater when it first came out, when I was still a teen. I viewed it through a teenager's lens. It was then a film about a deeply disturbed, misguided individual bent on making his mark in the big city and in some way rising above the lot that was dealt to him. That's how I interpreted the movie then.

I've seen Taxi Driver several times since. It's not my favorite Scorsese film; there is something deeply disturbing, subversive, and depraved about it in addition to its surface violence and depiction of New York's underworld. And I'm embarrassed to say that only recently has the film's profound and pathological racism gotten under my skin. It could be the fact of my age, or the current political and social climate where a certain stratum of white people have found it perfectly acceptable to air and act upon their racist views.

How could I ignore the racism in previous viewings? Well, as a woman of color who loves storytelling on screen, I've had to shift my thinking. After all, until very recently, most films produced by Hollywood have either racist or misogynist imagery, messages, and world views. Like black people who code switch, changing up their verbal expression depending on whether they are speaking to blacks or to whites, I had to switch up my mind -- and repress my outrage -- in order to accept the realities portrayed in most films. Yes, it can make you dizzy and a little bit schizophrenic, but that's the way things are in a world where white skin and white values are treated as the unquestionable default setting. I learned to take things at face value, to look at the art and dissect it later. Watching Taxi Driver this week, at this age (almost 60), and in this climate of racial unrest, gave me a new perspective on the film.

Travis Bickle appears to be just your average, middle American, working-class guy -- today, probably your classic Trump voter. He's served his country by fighting in Vietnam. He comes to New York with dreams of making something of himself but the reality appalls him: the film's imagery seems to show that he views the city as a cesspool, overrun with crime and filth but most of all, overrun with black people. He wants to make America great again, and in his mind, the way to do it is to strike back against those responsible.

It's no accident that his story unfurls against the background of a political campaign, with Palantine representing the liberal, laissez-faire, college-educated, progressive class. Bickle says he's not into politics, but his impossible pursuit of Cybill Shepherd's upper-crust campaign worker is rooted in the struggle between the working class and the privileged class. He's attracted to Betsy not so much in a romantic way, because his character is oddly inexperienced and asexual, but because of the white values she represents, and everything to which he feels he is entitled. He pursues her because of an irrepressible desire to win and then to humiliate her, knock her down several pegs, and bring her down to his level. That's really why he takes her to a Triple X film, to rub her face in filth.

Yet, the audience is supposed to view Travis as an upstanding young man. He works hard. He's served his country. He writes long (misleading)letters to the folks back home, and even sends them money. He takes neither drugs nor drink. And his motives in saving a 12-year-old prostitute from the streets are entirely motivated by his sense of kindness and justice.

Travis' unspoken bigotry against blacks builds through the film's imagery and reaction shots over several scenes. But it becomes palpable in the scene where he drives a vengeful husband, played by Scorsese himself, to a street corner to sit and watch a woman's silhouette in a second-floor window. "That's my wife up there," says the passenger. "You know who lives there? You know who lives there? A n----r lives there." Travis says nothing as the raving passenger declares that he's going to shoot both the wife and her lover and describes how he plans to maim her. Travis' silence in the face of this rant shows unspoken agreement, tacit approval of this plan, for certainly a white woman deserves retribution not only for adultery but a truly violent end for consorting with a black man.

The mood carries over to the very next scene, where Travis stops at a late-night cafeteria where fellow taxi drivers hang out. As he gets his coffee, a group of drivers gossip, with the Wizard telling a story about a gay couple who come to blows in his cab. Wizard says he doesn't care what two men do in the privacy of their own homes, a statement that lowers him in Travis' eyes. The only African American driver sits somewhat apart from the group, wearing darker clothes and dark glasses over his dark face. "Travis, you got that money you owe me?" His question carries with it a sense of a threat. Coming so soon after the previous scene, the audience can't help but unconsciously associate the black taxi driver with the unseen black lover who may or may not catch a bullet for daring to touch a white man's wife. Travis immediately pays up without a word.

Already in turmoil about his inarticulate feelings of rage and frustration, Travis then seeks advice from The Wizard, the taxi drivers' acknowledged leader, played by Peter Boyle, but it's an exercise in futility; the Wizard lost his authority with Travis the minute he admitted that he had a level of acceptance for gays. Wizard's rambling, "we're all fucked anyway" advice to take it easy or just get laid is toothless and somewhat immoral as far as Travis is concerned. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard," says Travis to the Wizard's no-help help. No, the Wizard and other "gutless" whites were part of the problem, not the solution, thinks Travis. His attitude is underscored at the start of the scene by a black man who passes by and stares Travis down. The camera follows to a couple of black prostitutes being harassed by young black boys on the corner. Black people are the source of all societal ills, is what the film seems to say.

It is right after this that Travis makes up his mind to do something about it, and gains an introduction to the traveling gun salesman Easy Andy, who also makes disparaging comments about blacks ("I could sell this to a jungle bunny in Harlem for 500 bucks, but I only sell high-quality goods to the right people," he says). The camera lingers lovingly across a broad arsenal of weapons, most of which Travis purchases. The scene is a reminder to me of middle America's "pry it out of my cold dead hands" love of gun ownership, of all of those voters who refuse to pass legislation banning or limiting guns; at its core, this idea that average Americans (whites) should not be deprived of access to weapons stems from -- I believe -- a profound fear and hatred of people of color and the deep-seated belief that the only way to keep them in their place is through the use of violent force masquerading as self-defense.

The film doesn't completely follow through with its racist convictions in the casting of Harvey Keitel as the pimp Sport, who manages Iris. But Keitel's portrayal indicates an ethnic flair (Puerto Rican, wigger?). I read that in the original Paul Schrader script, all of the victims of Travis' final-reel killing spree were African-American, but that was changed so as not to completely offend audiences of color. The race of Sport was probably changed for the same reason.

In the end, psychotic, bigoted, trigger-happy Travis gets away with his threat to Palantine as well as the serial murder of several lowlifes because he was saving a young white girl, the streetwalker Iris (who never asked him to save her). He is in fact celebrated for his actions. Iris' parents send him glowing letters of thanks, he receives public accolades, and even Betsy, whom he picks up in his taxi later, expresses admiration.

Travis Bickle is a hero to many, which is why his "You talking to me?" monologue continues to be so celebrated. While it is a bravura piece of acting, it's also the "don't fuck with me" challenge of a man who is ready to face down all threats, emboldened by the gun concealed up his sleeve. Revenge is one of America's favorite narratives, on and off the screen. Bickle gets his. He walks among us and he's probably just getting started.

The Endless Fascination With Heavenly Hookers

Since movies began, writers and directors have been obsessed with the idea of the "fallen woman," "the good-time girl," and denizens of the "house of ill repute." From the view of Mary Magdalene being a fallen woman on down through history, novels and films have focused on the "ruination" of women. Watching many of these films as a girl, I internalized some very strange, conflicting, confusing, illogical, misogynist, and paternalistic views of sexuality, what constitutes "acceptable" female behavior, and the parameters of heteronormative relationships.

After all, classic Hollywood had its morality code that was supposed to reflect societal norms. Women were somehow supposed to be chaste and virginal until marriage, and then to be completely devoted, loyal, and submissive to their husbands afterward. But movies being movies, there were multiple narratives about women who didn't follow that path, and there was often hell to pay. So many classic stories up through even the early 20th century involve women characters publicly shunned for being unmarried yet no longer virgins; for being "easy" or "familiar" with one or several men. The shame, the infamy, and the social condemnation that showers down on many of the big screen's female characters -- for being adulterers, courtesans, mistresses and prostitutes -- is stunning.

In many films, the femme fatale, or the woman who dares to flout sexual conventions, pays for her transgressions by losing her her mind or even her life (Butterfield 8, Carmen Jones). The moral to women -- particularly in films from the 1930s through the 1960s -- is to stay chaste and stay in their place until their one true love comes along and transforms and legitimizes them through marriage. Otherwise, they can expect to be outcast and condemned. Oddly, even today, where we supposedly have way more information about sex and sexual desire, and where the sexes are supposed to have equality and freedom of sexual expression, society continues to slut-shame women who have multiple sexual partners.

And yet, paradoxically, the mythology of the bad girl persists in the narrative imagination, spawning dozens of narratives in which their lives are romanticized, idolized, fetishized and admired for their flouting of convention, for their sexual prowess and their power over men. In fact, it seems like most men are gaga over prostitutes. Is it that they view them as honest and straightforward, providing what men see as a valuable combination of service with comfort, but without strings or emotional baggage? Are they embodiments of what men see as the perfect even exchange -- sex for money? If so, prostitutes can't help but gain a disproportionate regard in the male imagination. Just look at the films! While it's true that prostitutes exist in our society, the number of films involving them as protagonists appears to be vastly out of proportion with the rate at which women are working prostitutes in real life.

Yes, ladies who put out for money or favors -- or just because they actually like sex -- remain an endless source of fascination. The cliche of the "whore with a heart of gold" is still prominently featured in a number of films.

So alluring are these "bad" girls that there are a number of screen examples of men falling in love with prostitutes (Leaving Las Vegas, The Duchess & the Dirtwater Fox, Cinderella Liberty, Klute, Mona Lisa, L.A. Confidential, The Owl & the Pussycat, Irma LaDouce, Risky Business, The World of Suzy Wong, and Pretty Woman, to name only a few.) These same men then have to come to terms with the fact that the women continue to work their trade.

"No, I didn't quit. Did you quit?" spits call girl Shelley Long to Henry Winkler, the morgue director and financial wiz-turned-reluctant pimp, as she gets dressed to meet a john the day after they sleep together in the otherwise hilarious comedy Night Shift. Other stories show couples who fall on hard times and the women take to prostitution to help them survive (or at least get their next drug fix, as in Requiem for a Dream).

And lest you think that this obsession with whoredom in Hollywood is an exaggeration, look at how many hooker portrayals have garnered major awards attention! Here are ten from recent memory:

1. Butterfield 8 (1960, drama) - A 1950s potboiler about a doomed, high-class Manhattan call girl (Elizabeth Taylor) who falls in love with a married businessman and teeters on the edge of self-destruction and regret when he won't leave his wife for her. An Oscar for Taylor.

2. Cinderella Liberty (1973, drama) - Pregnant Seattle good time girl Marsha Mason hooks up with sailor James Caan, who is waiting for a missing check from the Navy. After birthing the stillborn baby of another man, she splits, leaving the sailor to raise her black son. Oscar nominated, Golden Globe winner.

3. Elmer Gantry (1960, drama) - In this screen adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis novel, a fast-talking traveling salesman (Burt Lancaster) helps expand the empire of a pretty evangelist (Jean Simmons) he falls in love with, only to be betrayed as a fraud by the small town girl he abandoned and since turned prostitute (Shirley Jones). An Oscar for Jones.

4. Irma La Douce (1963, musical) - In Beaux Arts era Paris, the gendarme (Jack Lemmon) who busts up a Parisian prostitution ring is fired, Now in love and shacked up with prostitute Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine) and must work double time to fend off her former pimp and keep her from sleeping with other clients. A Golden Globe for MacLaine.

5. Klute (1971, drama) - Sophisticated '70s New York call girl Jane Fonda falls for Donald Sutherland, the detective assigned to investigate the serial murders of several of her call girl friends. An Oscar for Fonda.

6. L.A. Confidential (1997, drama) - Investigating a gangland murder in 1940s Los Angeles, LAPD detective Bud White (Russell Crowe) unravels a web of crime and deceit. In the process, he falls in love with a high-class call girl who resembles then-screen goddess Veronica Lake (Kim Basinger). An Oscar for Basinger.

7. Leaving Las Vegas (1995, drama) - Failed Hollywood writer and hopeless drunk Nicholas Cage hooks up with tenderhearted hooker Elisabeth Shue who cares for him lovingly as he drinks himself to death. An Oscar for Shue.

8. Mighty Aphrodite (1995, comedy) - In this contemporary comedy using Greek mythology as a framing device (Aphrodite being the goddess of love), writer Woody Allen is dumbfounded to discover that the biological mother of his genius adopted son is a dimwitted, wisecracking New York prostitute (Mira Sorvino). He sets out to renovate her life with unforeseen results. An Oscar for Sorvino.

9. Monster (2003, drama) - True life crime drama about Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute in Daytona Beach who begins killing off johns. An Oscar for star Charlize Theron.

10. Pretty Woman (1990, dramedy)- Hollywood hooker Julia Roberts is picked up off the street by rich executive Richard Gere, who falls in love and decides to keep her for himself (the ultimate fantasy for each sex -- a woman wants a rich man who will forgive all her transgressions and love her for herself, while a man wants to find a woman who will perform whatever selfless sexual fantasies he wants in bed but who cleans up enough to stomp divets at the tony polo match). Roberts was Oscar nominated but took home a Golden Globe.

There are dozens of other films with these themes that didn't earn the same accolades. Suffice to say: The fascination with heavenly hookers continues apace. Now get set for the new HBO drama The Deuce, which examines the underworld of Times Square in the 1970s, and follows a disparate group of prostitutes, pimps, business owners and filmmakers as they launch the modern-day porn film industry.